election

We discuss the Wall Street Journal Business Technology blog piece on whether virtual worlds have a place in business communication.

We also talked through some of the latest insanity from the entertainment industry:

Quote Unquote records is a label that provides it’s music under a creative commons license. For the last week, their website has been down, the target of an RIAA copyright complaint.  Naturally, they’re furious, but their ISP isn’t putting the site back up.

And… Blu-ray is bombing.  Because of the economic downturn, consumers simply aren’t moving to the new, and more expensive, format.

The RIAA now wants to avoid trial in Maverick v. Harper.  They’re worried, apparently, that a trial might undermine the bedrock of their copyright infringement cases, which is that “making a file available on a P2P network” constitutes infringement.

And finally we discussed the US election, and Barack Obama’s promise to appoint a CTO for the USA.

On the Calliflower Conference Call: Dan York, Jeb Brilliant, Bill Volk, Sergio Meinardi, Mark Hewitt and Phil Wolff.

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It’s election day here in Canada.  Today on the SquawkBox we talked about the impact of digital media and the web on the election campaign, both here and in the United States where they’ve got a little less than a month to go on their election.

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After a little bit of good-natured ribbing from my American friends ("what? you guys are having an election?"), we got down to business.  Topics covered included the role of Twitter, Steve Gillmor‘s Newsgang Live Podcast, Barack Obama‘s use of advertising in xBox and the iPhone, Facebook, strategic voting, and the much speculated about Conservative database projects.

Later in the call we switched to the updated Mac’s that have been released today.  Speculation about the cool new features was running strong, and it turns out that the rumour mill was mostly right.  We chatted a little about the fact that the rumoured $899 model was in fact a new monitor, rather than a new PC.  And we also dove into Microsoft‘s Apple Tax argument.

On Today’s Calliflower Conference Call: James Body, Dan York, Jeb Brilliant, Steve Madigan, Hudson Barton, Brad Jones, Carl Ford, Dameon Welch-Abernathy, Jeff Black, Thijs Shoemaker, Randall Howard, William Volk and Sergio Meinardi

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On Election Day in Canada, which parties are offering the best digital rights policies?

October 14, 2008

Michael Geist has been doing some amazing work on digital issues during this election campaign. 1. Earlier in the campaign, Michael released the 2008 Copyright Pledge which simply asks candidates to agree to support balanced copyright reform.  You can read the full details of the pledge on his website.  As of election day, the Green [...]

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ChoiceBot’s Interactive Political Party Review

October 8, 2008

Nick Desbarats and his team at ChoiceBot have created an interactive tool for ranking political parties in the Canadian election.  Built around the ChoiceBot product review engine, this tool lets you use sliders to rank your views on each of the political parties, building a ranked list of them for you to consider on election [...]

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Ottawa Candidates Meeting

September 6, 2006

This is one I wish I could attend, but I’ll be at VON next.  If you’re part of the Ottawa tech community, head over to Bitheads next Tuesday evening. ——  It’s an Election Year. Come and hear what Mayoral candidates have to say about entrepreneurship and how it fits into their plans for Ottawa’s economic development. [...]

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We're in an Election (Again)

November 30, 2005

We have another election upon us here in Canada.  For those unfamiliar with our system of government, it’s parliamentary, and modeled on the British system.  One of the many consequences of that is that a political party can form the government without having an outright majority.  Later, if the minority parties band together, they can [...]

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Layton Takes a Swipe

April 28, 2005

Jack Layton took a swing at Stephen Harper today saying:"If we end up in an election, those who call it, will have taken their mind off people and will have begun to focus on political interests, and that’s very unfortunate."   That’s a little arrogant Jack.  Let’s have an election and see if the people really [...]

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February 7, 2005

Last week’s Globe carried a story with the headline "Politician’s promises not set in stone, court says".  The Canadian Taxpayers Federation took Dalton McGuinty to court over a broken promise.  In a much publicized media event during his campaign, McGuinty promised not to raise taxes, and then promptly jacked up taxes when he got into power.  [...]

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NDP or Bloc?

June 29, 2004

Watched the election last night, in disbelief, as the Liberals pulled it off again.  In our riding we sent David Pratt packing, and replaced him with a young Conservative named Pierre Poilievre.  Apparently, throughout the rest of Ontario, voters didn’t have the guts, and returned to the Liberals in droves. This morning’s Globe and Mail online [...]

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Calling the Liberals on the carpet over child porn

June 19, 2004

I read this morning’s Globe headline Tories try to connect Martin to child porn with a sinking feeling.  The restraint the Conservatives have shown, even in the face of the Liberal ad campaign, has been one of their most effective tactics, in my opinion.  Trying to connect a popular politician, like Martin, with child porn, is [...]

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